Plugin causing 500 error

@sandraculi We’re sorry to hear you are experiencing this issue on your site.

Regarding your issue, ?can you please confirm you are using the most recent version of Yoast SEO, version 16.0.2? You can learn more about updating here: https://yoast.com/help/how-can-i-update-my-free-plugin/

Also, can you confirm you are using WordPress 5.7? You can check by clicking on the W in the top left and selecting About. If you need to update, please check with your host provider. Please know that if you are using an older version of WordPress Core you may experience unexpected behavior with Yoast. This guide explains more: https://yoast.com/why-we-dont-support-old-wordpress-versions/

If you update to the most current version of WordPress and Yoast SEO, does this resolve the issue?

If you have already confirmed that both Yoast SEO Premium and WordPress are up to date and the issue is still occurring, we would next recommend performing a conflict check to determine whether another plugin or theme is interfering with the Yoast plugin.

The fastest way to do this is to?deactivate all non-Yoast plugins and switch to a standard theme?like?TwentyTwentyOne.

Test this on your development or staging site, if you have one. If not, we recommend using the?Health Check & Troubleshooting?plugin. This plugin allows you to run a conflict check?without affecting normal visitors to your site.

If you’re unfamiliar with checking for conflicts, we’d like to point you to a step-by-step guide that will walk you through the process:?How to check for plugin conflicts.

Hey there!

Yes, I’ve updated to version 5.7 of WordPress and YOAST version 16.0.2 recently and unfortunately the issue was still there after the updates.

I have indeed done what you described (deactivate all other plugins and switch to the standard theme) but that didn’t work either.

BR, Sandra

@sandraculi Thanks for your reply and we’re sorry to hear you are still receiving the 500 error even with a default theme and only Yoast SEO active.

A 500 error is an internal server error, which can occur for a very large number of different reasons including that the server cannot output the file in the manner it was requested, if the resources required to generate the page are not available, the request is timing out due to the resource restrictions, and many others.

However, if a 500 error is occurring on the site that type of error will be logged on the server. You may not have access to the log where the details of the error are located, but if you ask for this information from your hosting provider they should be able to provide it upon request. Can you please check with your hosting provider and see whether they are able to review their log files for the server and provide more specific information for the 500 error that you are receiving?

Hey there,

OK, so the host referred me to the location where I can download error logs. Would it be possible to upload these somewhere so you could review them? That would be amazing, I’m a total n00b with this ??

Or maybe you could point out what to look for in the files?

BR, Sandra

@sandraculi Thanks for your reply.

The best way to find the error is usually by first checking your WAN IP (you can do that on a site like this), then triggering the error to occur on the site, and then searching in the error log for your IP.

The error should be time stamped as well. So between your IP, when the error occurred, and that the error should be towards the beginning of the log file (since it just occurred when you triggered it), this should make it fairly easy to find the exact error.

Hi there,

I’ve dared to reactivate the plugin ?? My recent posts are still loading veeeeeery slow although not resulting in a 500 error. The strange thing is, this is only happenening in recent posts (published after half Feb). Older posts load quickly as usual.

So I’m afraid I can’t get to an errorlog. Will this comparison help to give more insights?

Newer post, loading time 20 seconds:
https://gtmetrix.com/reports/culi-sandra.nl/toCwkxRj/

Older post, loading time 3.5 seconds:
https://gtmetrix.com/reports/culi-sandra.nl/n9KjVJwv/

I will disable the plugin again now.

BR, Sandra

@sandraculi Unfortunately we aren’t able to discern from the GTMetrix reports you provided what the issue is that is causing the performance problem.

Regarding the error log, was your host unable to provide the log?

Hi again!

So I found the file and I can see a few things. Errors start on the 14th of January 2021, before there weren’t many errors at all.

This is where the errors start, I’m not really sure what this error is about. It only seems to appear once though:

[14-Jan-2021 11:47:14 UTC] WordPress databasefout Row size too large. The maximum row size for the used table type, not counting BLOBs, is 8126. This includes storage overhead, check the manual. You have to change some columns to TEXT or BLOBs bij query ALTER TABLEwp_yoast_indexableADDestimated_reading_time_minutesint(11) gemaakt door require('wp-blog-header.php'), require_once('wp-load.php'), require_once('wp-config.php'), require_once('wp-settings.php'), do_action('plugins_loaded'), WP_Hook->do_action, WP_Hook->apply_filters, call_user_func_array, wpseo_init, WPSEO_Meta::init, WPSEO_Options::get, WPSEO_Options::prime_cache, WPSEO_Options::get_all, WPSEO_Options::get_options, WPSEO_Options::get_option, get_option, apply_filters('option_wpseo_titles'), WP_Hook->apply_filters, call_user_func_array, WPSEO_Option->get_option, WPSEO_Option->array_filter_merge, WPSEO_Option->get_defaults, WPSEO_Option_Titles->enrich_defaults, YoastSEO, Yoast\WP\SEO\Main->load, Yoast\WP\SEO\Loader->load, Yoast\WP\SEO\Loader->load_initializers, Yoast\WP\SEO\Initializers\Migration_Runner->initialize, Yoast\WP\SEO\Initializers\Migration_Runner->run_free_migrations, Yoast\WP\SEO\Initializers\Migration_Runner->run_migrations, Yoast\WP\SEO\Initializers\Migration_Runner->run_migration, Yoast\WP\SEO\Config\Migrations\AddEstimatedReadingTime->up, Yoast\WP\Lib\Migrations\Migration->add_column, Yoast\WP\Lib\Migrations\Adapter->add_column, Yoast\WP\Lib\Migrations\Adapter->execute_ddl, Yoast\WP\Lib\Migrations\Adapter->query

Then, this error message appears and that one keeps on repeating for many different recipes:

[14-Jan-2021 12:17:09 UTC] WordPress databasefout Unknown column 'estimated_reading_time_minutes' in 'field list' bij query UPDATEwp_yoast_indexableSETobject_id= '11960',object_type= 'post',object_sub_type= 'post',permalink= 'https://culi-sandra.nl/?p=11960',primary_focus_keyword_score= NULL,readability_score= '90',is_cornerstone= '0',is_robots_noindex= NULL,is_robots_nofollow= '0',is_robots_noimageindex= NULL,is_robots_noarchive= NULL,is_robots_nosnippet= NULL,open_graph_image= NULL,open_graph_image_id= NULL,open_graph_image_source= NULL,open_graph_image_meta= NULL,twitter_image= NULL,twitter_image_id= NULL,twitter_image_source= NULL,primary_focus_keyword= NULL,canonical= NULL,title= NULL,description= NULL,breadcrumb_title= 'Crackers met ricotta en passievrucht',open_graph_title= NULL,open_graph_description= NULL,twitter_title= NULL,twitter_description= NULL,estimated_reading_time_minutes= NULL,author_id= '1',post_parent= '0',number_of_pages= NULL,post_status= 'draft',is_protected= '0',is_public= '0',has_public_posts= NULL,blog_id= '1',schema_page_type= NULL,schema_article_type= NULL,permalink_hash= '31:162825d7e8c00a14dbe3c21a59109217',updated_at= '2021-01-14 12:17:09' WHEREid= '2751' gemaakt door require('wp-blog-header.php'), wp, WP->main, WP->parse_request, do_action_ref_array('parse_request'), WP_Hook->do_action, WP_Hook->apply_filters, call_user_func_array, rest_api_loaded, WP_REST_Server->serve_request, WP_REST_Server->dispatch, call_user_func, WP_REST_Autosaves_Controller->create_item, wp_update_post, wp_insert_post, do_action('wp_insert_post'), WP_Hook->do_action, WP_Hook->apply_filters, call_user_func_array, Yoast\WP\SEO\Integrations\Watchers\Indexable_Post_Watcher->build_indexable, Yoast\WP\SEO\Builders\Indexable_Builder->build_for_id_and_type, Yoast\WP\SEO\Builders\Indexable_Builder->save_indexable, Yoast\WP\SEO\Models\Indexable->save, Yoast\WP\Lib\Model->save, Yoast\WP\Lib\ORM->save, Yoast\WP\Lib\ORM::execute

Another error that keeps on appearing is this one, this one started appearing on the 28th of Feb which I believe is around the time I found out something was off. This one also caused many error logs when I activated the plugin for a little while two days ago:

[28-Feb-2021 11:17:57 UTC] WordPress databasefout Duplicate entry '114-0' for key 'PRIMARY' bij query INSERT INTOwp_yoast_indexable_hierarchy(indexable_id,ancestor_id,depth,blog_id) VALUES ('114', '0', '0', '1') gemaakt door require('wp-blog-header.php'), require_once('wp-includes/template-loader.php'), include('/themes/sitka/single.php'), get_header, locate_template, load_template, require_once('/themes/sitka/header.php'), wp_head, do_action('wp_head'), WP_Hook->do_action, WP_Hook->apply_filters, call_user_func_array, Yoast\WP\SEO\Integrations\Front_End_Integration->call_wpseo_head, do_action('wpseo_head'), WP_Hook->do_action, WP_Hook->apply_filters, call_user_func_array, Yoast\WP\SEO\Integrations\Front_End_Integration->present_head, Yoast\WP\SEO\Memoizers\Meta_Tags_Context_Memoizer->for_current_page, Yoast\WP\SEO\Repositories\Indexable_Repository->for_current_page, Yoast\WP\SEO\Repositories\Indexable_Repository->find_by_id_and_type, Yoast\WP\SEO\Builders\Indexable_Builder->build_for_id_and_type, Yoast\WP\SEO\Builders\Indexable_Builder->save_indexable, do_action('wpseo_save_indexable'), WP_Hook->do_action, WP_Hook->apply_filters, call_user_func_array, Yoast\WP\SEO\Integrations\Watchers\Indexable_Ancestor_Watcher->reset_children, array_walk, Yoast\WP\SEO\Integrations\Watchers\Indexable_Ancestor_Watcher->update_hierarchy_and_permalink, Yoast\WP\SEO\Builders\Indexable_Hierarchy_Builder->build, Yoast\WP\SEO\Builders\Indexable_Hierarchy_Builder->save_ancestors, Yoast\WP\SEO\Repositories\Indexable_Hierarchy_Repository->add_ancestor, Yoast\WP\Lib\Model->save, Yoast\WP\Lib\ORM->save, Yoast\WP\Lib\ORM::execute

[01-Apr-2021 08:22:52 UTC] WordPress databasefout Duplicate entry '3093-0' for key 'PRIMARY' bij query INSERT INTOwp_yoast_indexable_hierarchy(indexable_id,ancestor_id,depth,blog_id) VALUES ('3093', '0', '0', '1') gemaakt door require('wp-blog-header.php'), require_once('wp-includes/template-loader.php'), include('/themes/sitka/single.php'), get_header, locate_template, load_template, require_once('/themes/sitka/header.php'), wp_head, do_action('wp_head'), WP_Hook->do_action, WP_Hook->apply_filters, wp_robots, apply_filters('wp_robots'), WP_Hook->apply_filters, Yoast\WP\SEO\Integrations\Front_End\WP_Robots_Integration->add_robots, Yoast\WP\SEO\Integrations\Front_End\WP_Robots_Integration->get_robots_value, Yoast\WP\SEO\Memoizers\Meta_Tags_Context_Memoizer->for_current_page, Yoast\WP\SEO\Repositories\Indexable_Repository->for_current_page, Yoast\WP\SEO\Repositories\Indexable_Repository->find_by_id_and_type, Yoast\WP\SEO\Builders\Indexable_Builder->build_for_id_and_type, Yoast\WP\SEO\Builders\Indexable_Builder->save_indexable, do_action('wpseo_save_indexable'), WP_Hook->do_action, WP_Hook->apply_filters, Yoast\WP\SEO\Integrations\Watchers\Indexable_Ancestor_Watcher->reset_children, array_walk, Yoast\WP\SEO\Integrations\Watchers\Indexable_Ancestor_Watcher->update_hierarchy_and_permalink, Yoast\WP\SEO\Builders\Indexable_Hierarchy_Builder->build, Yoast\WP\SEO\Builders\Indexable_Hierarchy_Builder->save_ancestors, Yoast\WP\SEO\Repositories\Indexable_Hierarchy_Repository->add_ancestor, Yoast\WP\Lib\Model->save, Yoast\WP\Lib\ORM->save, Yoast\WP\Lib\ORM::execute

BR, Sandra

Hi @sandraculi,

Thanks for the information about the database errors. Please try the following steps to reindex the SEO data on your site:

1. Install and activate the Yoast Test Helper plugin
2. Go to Tools -> Yoast Test
3. Click the “Reset indexables and migrations” button
4. Go to SEO -> Tools and under “Optimize SEO Data” click the “Start SEO data optimization” button.

For sites with more than 10,000 posts, we’d advise using the WP CLI command to do the indexation on the server instead of going to SEO > Tools. You can read more about this here: WP CLI – Reindex Indexables command

Do the errors still appear?`

We are going ahead and marking this issue as resolved due to inactivity. If you require any further assistance please create a new issue.